Michelle Obama Wants To Permanently End Mental Illness Stigma

FLOTUS continues to make us proud with her great leadership and platforms.

Despite the many forward-thinking ideas that have developed in this country throughout the last few decades, one that sadly remains unchanged is how mental illness is viewed and the ugly stigma that is attached to those who suffer from it. Leave it to the wonderful FLOTUS Michelle Obama to take a stand against the perception of mental illness and a push to do more to preserve mental health as a whole.

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Michelle Obama has led and established many programs and initiatives throughout her time as First Lady and although her time is sadly coming to an end, she is determined to tackle the overwhelming negligence of mental illness. The Huffington Post has the details of Michelle Obama’s plans to end this stigma once and for all.

Via Huffington Post:

The First Lady slammed the stereotypes around mental health conditions in Prevention’s October issue, telling the magazine that she doesn’t understand why there’s still shame surrounding such a common health problem.

“The stigma around talking about mental health and getting help for it just doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “This is an issue that affects us all. I kept meeting service members and military spouses who were hesitant to ask for help because they thought they should be able to handle it themselves or that seeking help meant they were weak or broken,” she told Prevention. “But of course that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

[Michelle] Obama also teamed up with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge earlier this year to advocate for more awareness around children’s mental health. She explained to Prevention that in order to change the culture’s negative perception around mental illness, parents need to stress the importance of psychological well-being to their children.“We need to teach our kids that mental illnesses are just like physical illnesses and deserve the same kind of care and compassion,” she said.

As if we needed more reasons to absolutely love FLOTUS, she gives us something else to admire her for. With the numbers of those suffering from mental illness steadily increasing, it definitely should no longer carry any shame or judgment.